The Ultimate Wedding Planning Checklist Every Bride Needs to Follow

Posted by Denette Wilford on June 29, 2018

Whether you give yourself a ton of time or only have a few months, when planning a wedding, it's all about organization and time management. Thanks to today's average cost of a wedding in Canada, when pulling together your own to-do list, you need to know your priorities and be comfortable juggling a few tasks, all while keeping your cool.

"When they have a calendar or checklist, it allows for them to focus on the task at hand, what's important, check it off and move on," said Jodi Gagné, wedding planner and founder of Simply Perfect. "There are some couples who come to me and we can turn a wedding around in three weeks. Anything is possible, it just depends on their personality, how flexible they are, if they're open in terms of the venue, how quick they make decisions and whether they're good at checking it off, don't look back, move forward."

For the majority of engaged couples, it obviously takes a lot longer than that. Whatever your timeline, here's how to plan a wedding in 36 weeks. You may have to do a little tinkering with your own schedule but if you follow along carefully, you'll get the idea of what you need to do to have the best wedding imaginable.

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Set a date and time for the wedding

Um, kind of the most important detail.

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Create a preliminary guest list

"You need an idea of how many guests you're working with," says Gagné. "It'll dictate the kind of venue you're going to go to. If you have an intimate wedding of 50 people, you don't necessarily want to go to a banquet hall that typically holds 400 because then they're lost in that space."

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Select a ceremony venue and/or reception venue

"Venues can sometimes book out over a year in advance." Yikes. Gagné also notes that if the venue does not have a caterer, that needs to be selected.

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Select a ceremony officiant

If it's not at a church, that is. Gagné points out the obvious: "If they don't have a site, if they don't have someone to marry them, and there's no food for the guests, what's the point?"

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Select the bridal party

"That will lead into selecting and knowing how many attendants are needed, the gowns, ordering the bridal ensemble because a bridal gown, for the most part, is on a nine-month cutting cycle," says Gagné. Which leads us to the next point.

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Find the wedding gown

Once the bridal party is chosen, Gagné points out that a lot of brides "want to go shopping with their girls." Totally makes sense. Just don't go too over-the-top with a wedding gown.

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Select a photographer

"Photographers book really early, especially the really awesome ones," warns Gagné. Once a photographer is chosen, the couple can set up their engagement photo session. "If they want engagement photos they can use them for other things like their guestbook or their Save the Date cards."

Bridesmaids' and flower girls' attire

Their turn. At this point, the bride will have a rough idea of the colour scheme she's going for, what shades will look best in her venue and at what time of year the wedding will take place. This all feeds into the choosing of the bridesmaids dresses.

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Prepare the Save the Dates

And since it's 2018, Gagné suggests creating a wedding website where the guests can go for any information needed.

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Send out Save the Dates

Do this with eight months to go. It's a win-win for everyone on this wedding planning checklist.

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Create a preliminary timeline for the actual wedding day

Determining the logistics for the big day like when and where the bridal party's getting ready, getting camera ready, length of the ceremony, cocktails, formal introductions, dinner service, speeches, special dances, all that fun stuff will give them a skeleton of the flow of events, says Gagné. "So they're not trying to figure all of that the day of."

Select ceremony and reception musicians

Arrange hotel accommodations

We're down to about four to six months to go, depending on your timeline. Whether it's for the out-of-town guests or for the bride and groom on the actual wedding night, you'll want to make sure your reservations are set.

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Order invitations

"By then you'll know the date, time, venue, if hotel info cards are needed," says Gagné.

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Order wedding cake

Organize transportation

"Transportation is getting from A to B if their ceremony and reception are at different locations and the photo location is more than a two-minute walk," details Gagné. "They need to know how they're getting from one space to the next."

She further explains, "So it would involve picking up the groom and the male attendants and get them to the church, picking up the bride and female attendants to get them to the church, then picking up the bridal party and getting them to the photo location, and from the photo location to the reception venue. And then a pickup at the end of the night, if needed."

Select music for ceremony and reception

Final details meetings

With six weeks to go, this is the time when you want to ensure everything's good to go, from the officiant, caterer and venue to the photographer, musicians and floral decor. No mishaps here, thank you very much!